


Soluble

by shontos_garden



Category: Tatta Hitotsu no Koi
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-24 19:33:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2593700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shontos_garden/pseuds/shontos_garden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Confronting one's mortality is never easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soluble

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Livejournal July 2007.
> 
> A belated birthday gift for [](http://kitsune714.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://kitsune714.livejournal.com/)**kitsune714**. :)
> 
> When I started this fic, I didn't really know where it was going - somehow it ended up far more angsty than I'd intended.

 

When she walks in the front door, she knows he is home from the jacket and heavy work boots discarded near the door. She imagines him slumped on the step, weariedly pulling them off. The boots lie on their sides with the socks in a dismal heap nearby: Hiroto is rarely so untidy. Nao worries her lower lip as she pads through their small apartment on bare feet in search of her absent husband.

She finds him huddled on the floor in a corner of their narrow concrete balcony, back tight against the wall with his knees drawn in close to his chest. The tie her mother gave him at Christmas hangs loose and askew around his neck where his collar is open. Moisture glistens in the hollow of his throat. His arms are stretched straight out over his knees, his hands loose and despondent from the wrist. He rests his head against the wall.

She follows his gaze through the iron railing to look down over the ramshackle collection of apartment buildings and shops that comprise their unglamourous, somewhat dismal neighborhood. He seems entirely unaware of the warm summer rain that has soaked through his white button-down shirt and slides down his face like tears.

"Hiroto," she says urgently, but he doesn't respond. He doesn't even blink. Her frown deepens and she curls her toes into the rug in front of the sliding door. She knows then what she must do.

"Wait," she speaks into the quiet of falling rain. "Just wait."

*

It's a learned strategy: in a crisis, her mother always made tea. "It makes me feel better," Nao's mother reminded her many times, "to do something with my hands. And it makes _you_ feel better to hold something in yours."

Nao slides the door to the balcony open again, and it sticks slightly, scrapes roughly in the track. She slips through the slivered opening with two steaming cups and gracefully lowers herself onto the wet concrete before handing one cup to Hiroto. He rouses slowly, incrementally, before he accepts the mug with faintly trembling hands. Rain drips from his chin into the tea. She feels it instantly as her skirt soaks up the water pooling on the rough floor and as fat raindrops darken her white linen tank top.

She says him name quietly, pressing her back into the thin iron bars behind her. She blows on her tea before taking a cautious sip.

He does not respond, although he swallows once, twice. With unseeing eyes, he contemplates the pale golden-green liquid in the white mug - white like his shirt before the rain, white that surrounds his dark irises, perfect, funereal white.

Nao waits, quelling her trepidation. She knows this man who sits frozen, statue-still - she feels the knife-edged distress emanating from him, but it's not worse than that, or she would be more frightened. She sips her tea to conceal her concern.

Hiroto's feet are bare and irresistible beside her. Not looking away from his face, she reaches down with her left hand and touches his left foot. His skin is cool and very wet as her palm slides over him. He trembles almost immediately beneath her touch, and his eyes - finally - flicker to meet hers.

Nao gazes back at him steadily without smiling. His eyes are guilty, bleak.

"Nao," he breathes. He looks down at the barely-noticed cup of tea in his hands which he slowly raises to his mouth and he tips his head back to drain it, his adam's apple bobbing with each gulping swallow. When he's finished he holds the cup out to her, and he rubs the back of a hand over his mouth. It's raining harder now. She sets both cups aside and hopes that the tea loosens his tongue.

"There was an accident," he says at last. Her heart spasms in a flash of fear but then she reminds herself that it couldn't be him. Nonetheless, her eyes instinctively search for signs of damage.

"At work," he continues, his voice low and tight. "It happened right in front of me. I couldn't do anything - _anything_ \- to stop it."

Nao's stomach clenches at the intensity of bitterness in Hiroto's voice, the self-recrimination that has left his voice raw and angry.

"What happened?"

"It was an accident," he repeats dully. "A stupid, ugly accident..."

She waits.

"I went with him to the hospital. I held his hand all the way there - I told him that his wife would be there waiting for him when we arrived."

Nao holds her breath against the sudden sharp ache in her throat. She's never had any illusions about the sort of work he does - even now, as a foreman, his position protects him only a little from danger - she knows that anything can happen in the busy shipyard. Still, she tries not to think about it. If she lets herself think about it, she might lose herself to the anxiety, and he would hate that. So would she.

"I held his hand in the ambulance," Hitoro says heavily. "He just...died. He never made it to his wife."

Hiroto shivers, and Nao's hand tightens where she holds his foot. She wants to fling her arms around him, to pull him back from his remote unhappiness. She wants to tell him that nothing like that will ever happen to them, but the words choke her. She can't lie. She doesn't _know_ \- no one does.

"I'm sorry," she whispers into the rain. She thinks of the dead man's wife, of Hiroto with lifeless eyes. She shifts, squeezes his ankle lightly, and she rolls onto her knees. "Come with me, Hiroto."

His eyes cling to her now, filled with anguish. "Nao," he begins, distressed.

"Just come," she repeats more insistently. She doesn't care if he's drenched by the rain, or that she is drenched by the rain. She only wants him to follow her, to be with her, to come inside. She crawls through the open space of the sliding door and turns. His hands seize her shoulders in a crushing grip. He cups the back of her head and lays her down on the polished wooden floor beside their futon. Rain drips from him onto her, trails down his cheeks, so she licks at the corner of his mouth, along the line of his jaw as she strains upward against him. She doesn't think about anything but Hiroto when he pushes her skirt to her waist, and her knees open as he slides his fingers into her warmth. She shudders.

She expects him to be rough, but he is not. Even locked in his private pain, he thinks of her before he thinks of himself, and she doesn't want it. She won't have it. She wants him to forget for a while, to love her and fill her and fill himself with something alive.

 _Stop it,_ she thinks, _let go._ Nao wills him to understand without the words. She stares into his sad eyes. "Hiroto. You're _cold._ "

And so he is. It's not cold outside and neither is the rain, but the chill from his skin, from his fingers inside her, radiates, spreads.

"You're not," he replies in a wondering voice, looking down. He kisses her, harder now, and she tastes rain and tears.

Nao knows what he's thinking because it's what she's thinking, but they are both young, and they have both eaten enough bitter mortality to last them the rest of their lives. He lived in fear of her death for long enough, she thinks, he shouldn't now worry for his own.

"Just..." The words fade on her tongue, and she arches against him. Their skin slides together, wet and warm now, and she kisses him again and again.

*

At last, it is dark and night, and she sees only the city lights glitter dimly in his eyes. She wraps her arms around him and feels his answering touch. Together they nestle, quiet, and listen to the rain.

 

FIN

* * *


End file.
